From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon May 15 18:07:27 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 15 May 2006 18:07:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1Ffo1l-0007ex-5w for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 15 May 2006 18:07:09 -0700 Received: from mail7.sea5.speakeasy.net ([69.17.117.9]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1Ffo1j-0007ep-CD for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 15 May 2006 18:07:09 -0700 Received: (qmail 8456 invoked from network); 16 May 2006 01:07:03 -0000 Received: from at.ropine.com (HELO [192.168.1.56]) (sethg@[66.92.76.238]) (envelope-sender ) by mail7.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 16 May 2006 01:07:03 -0000 Message-ID: <446925B5.3050705@ropine.com> Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 21:07:01 -0400 From: Seth Gordon User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.8 (X11/20060502) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: "democracy" vs "representative republic" in lojban? References: <20060515221217.40402.qmail@web32504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <20060515221217.40402.qmail@web32504.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 11549 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: sethg@ropine.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Ryan Gray wrote: > Hi, I hope someone in this forum can help me use > lojban to clarify a point. In another forum, there is > a debate about the difference between "democracy" and > "representative republic." One faction seems to > believe that any form of government that elects its > leaders is a "democracy. Another faction (the one I am > partial to) argues that, by definition, a democracy > does not have any protections for individual rights > and the "will of the people" rules the day regardless > of whose rights are trampled upon. The argument in > this faction is that in a democracy a majority of > cannibals could vote to eat a minority of vegetarians. > No ones rights would be protected. How would one make > this distinction in lojban? If some fluent Lojban speaker believes that a democracy is any kind of government that elects its leaders, then he or she could come up with some Lojban phrase literally meaning "government in which the vote of the majority can override any rights of the minority" and say that's the Lojban translation of "democracy". And then another speaker can come up with another phrase that means "any form of government that elects its leaders" and claim that no, *that* phrase is the proper Lojban translation of "democracy". And then whatever debate you were having on that other forum could repeat itself on this list. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.